Asking for Permission

Not long ago, I sent an email to a friend, and referred to her as a writer. She replied and said she was flattered; that she doesn’t consider herself one yet. I replied back, telling her that of COURSE she was a writer. Of COURSE.

What she may not remember was a moment in 2010 when she and I had the same conversation, but I was on the opposite end. I was just about to publish my first cookbook, and I was trying to decide if I had done enough of the work – after all, I just compiled the recipes, most of them weren’t mine – to be called an author. And, if I wasn’t the author, what would I say on the last page about me? “About the Compiler”?
She did a search on Amazon, and came back with her results. I was an author. I may not remember correctly, but I believe that what she said was something along the lines of “You’re an author, toots.”

It took a lot to get there, but I now call myself a writer. I put it on foreign customs information; in profiles I fill out; I even put it down as my occupation when I got an eye exam before I left the States and ended up selling a book because of it. It took me a long time to get here, but it’s not the only thing that I am, and there are many things that don’t feel comfortable to call myself yet; one of them is author. It may feel like splitting hairs, but for me it has felt like an important one to split. I realized why not long ago: I am waiting for permission.

Permission. I have a degree in print journalism, I have written two books that are published and several more that are not. I write every day, and yet some part of me is waiting until I have published something wildly popular – like a bestselling novel – before I call myself an author. It’s a moving target, you see: no matter how much I strive toward a goal, I always find myself only halfway there, waiting for someone else to tell me what I already know I am.

This isn’t my only example. I don’t call myself a chef because I’ve never gone to school. I don’t call myself a Spanish teacher because I don’t have a teaching degree. I don’t call myself an expert in how to create the life of your dreams, because there’s no degree for that, and because I haven’t quite figured it out myself yet, even if I have started to compile the steps through years of trying to figure it out. I am waiting for permission, you see, and I have just stumbled upon a realization: I’ve been waiting for permission from the wrong people.

It all has to come from me, you see. I cannot wait for someone else to tell me what I am. I cannot wait for all the markers that apply to doctors or lawyers to be applied to writers, authors, life coaches, or adventurers. Even if I do all these things well, I have been shying away from calling myself anything that would cause someone to say, “Wait a minute, what school did you get your degree in travel addiction from?” and I would have to defend myself. No more.

My friend is a writer. I am an author, because I say I am, and because in the end, it’s me that has to believe it. I am also an inner voice coach, an adventure coach, a life of your dreams cheerleader, a Spanish coach, and a damn good cook. I am none of these things because someone gave me a certificate that said them; I am all of these things because I say I am, and I’m the only one I need to ask for permission to call me whatever I am, and whatever I want to be.




Love and authored kisses,
Morgan

Baby Steps Still Propel You Forward

I can be an impatient person. I see an end goal, a final project, and all I want is to have it DONE. Although I have the ability to also foresee the many, many steps involved in getting to the end of something, it is often hard for me to calmly take each step, knowing that eventually what I want will materialize before me, not with a *POOF* as if out of nowhere, but instead out of the many small steps I have taken in the right direction.

This has been especially hard for me lately. I am planning a move, and the move requires many small steps that will eventually leave me in the new place where I desire to be. In turn, moving will give me some time and space to focus, which will then lead to more time to write, something I want so badly it leaves a lump in my throat.

I have been craving time to write for years. This craving is what led me to quit my job in Bellevue – it led me to make a decision to divert part of each paycheck into a savings account that I never touched; to stay at the job in Bellevue for a year, wanting to tear my hair out, as my baby steps eventually led to the day that I turned in my resignation and walked out with the money to start again.

I learned about publishing in baby steps: how the industry worked, the advantages of self-publishing, the slowly changing behemoth of traditional publishing, and the joy of learning of other like-minded individuals who want to breathe life into their words and share that life with others.

I wrote my cookbooks in baby steps. Talk to wineries and restaurants; create recipe templates, call, email and cajole contributors, make appointments to take pictures, test recipes one at a time, lay out pages, edit, edit, EDIT, print, sell, one Facebook post, one local retailer, one Amazon sale, one new friend at a time.

I have grown confident of my writing in baby steps. Regardless of how long I have called myself a writer, it has only been recently that I have started sending out essays to publications, no longer afraid of their rejection. Suddenly I realize that I have something important to say and all I need is to find the right place to say it. This is not to say that I will not continue to improve, but only through writing for the past four years have I finally gotten to the point where I can realize that I am actually a writer in a way that feels real and visceral.

I have found my way here through baby steps. I feel a book trying to emerge, and I want it to come out in one fell swoop, leaping out of my brow much like Athena leaped, fully formed and ready to fight, out of Zeus’ forehead. The task seems overwhelming. It seems like I will never finish, because it is so hard to start; because the baby steps seem so infinitely small.

More than a year ago, two writing friends and I decided to do the Artist’s Way. It is a 12-week program to help people rediscover their creativity, in whatever way, shape and form it may take. One of the essential parts of the course is the morning pages: first thing in the morning, you take a pen and a notebook and write. At first, I got up an hour early to do this. At first, I wrote the three pages suggested, but then I realized that I was taking on more than I could handle. I cut it down to a page, got up a half hour early, and found it was the most joyful part of my day. Fifteen months later, I look forward to waking up, making coffee and settling in with a cup in one hand and a pen in the other, a notebook resting on my lap. More often than not, I fill two or three pages before I realize what I’ve done. I have filled more than 500 pages – front and back – with my scrawling handwriting. 

I am impatient, and yet the mountains I have moved the farthest are the ones that I pushed a little at a time. Although the ones ahead seem daunting, all I have to do is look behind me to see how far I’ve already come, one baby step at a time.

Love and baby step kisses

Morgan

What Would Confidence Do For You?

I used to work with a man whose last name was Murphy, so everyone called him “Murph.” He was in his fifties, and while we worked at the same company he had his 30th wedding anniversary. When I asked him the secret to his marriage, he said it was two words: “Yes, dear.” He told me that to him it meant that sometimes it wasn’t worth the battle, and agreeing with his wife instead of starting a fight was worth more than the opinion would have been. This was one of the great life lessons I learned from Murph, but not the most important one.
It turned out I knew the guy his daughter was dating – we had both gone to WSU and had a mutual friend. I told him that I really liked the guy, and that his daughter had good taste.
“I know,” he said. “When she was growing up, I made sure the most important thing I instilled in her was confidence in herself. I knew if I gave her that, I would never again have to worry about her decisions.”
It has taken me years and a lot of heartache to get to the place where Murph’s daughter already was. This is not something I think I lacked because my parents didn’t give it to me – they always told me I could do whatever I wanted – but somewhere in the middle of society and culture, the idea of instilling confidence in our children has gotten lost, and I was no exception.
I think a lot about what our lives – women’s lives especially – would be like if we grew up having more confidence in ourselves. How many fewer destructive relationships would we have? How much more money would we make? How much more would we stick up for what we believed in if we had confidence, not necessarily that we were right, but that we had a right to our opinion and our feelings? How much less would we worry about our bodies if we were confident that we were loveable regardless of what we looked like? How much less would we agonize over where we were going in life if we had the confidence to believe we could do anything?
I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet. If I had had half the faith in myself as others have had in me, I would have been able to take a lot of shortcuts to get to where I am today. Although I know that we can’t grow into the people we are without some growing pains, I think developing confidence early would help us recognize the value of the other lessons sooner. Now that I know that, I can forge ahead, confident I’m heading in the right direction, and that the lessons will be worth the growing pains.

Love and confident kisses
Morgan